Mercor quintuples value to $10 billion with $350 million Series C

Mercurwhich connects AI labs with domain experts to train their core AI models, has raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.

Felicis Ventures, which led the previous company $100 million Series B At a $2 billion valuation, it also leads this round. Existing investors Benchmark, General Catalyst, and new investor Robinhood Ventures also participated.

TechCrunch reported in September that Mercor has been in talks with investors to raise a Series C at a $10 billion valuationup from its $8 billion target a few months ago. The company at the time told potential investors that it already had multiple offers.

Mercor started out as an AI recruiting platform, but quickly focused on providing companies with subject-matter experts to conduct training on AI models — such as scientists, doctors, and lawyers — and charging an hourly finder’s fee and a matching rate for their work.

The company has also added more software infrastructure for reinforcement learning — a training method by which a model or agent’s decisions are verified or challenged, enabling it to incorporate feedback and improve over time. The company intends to eventually build an AI-powered recruitment marketplace.

Mercur’s fortunes rose after leading artificial intelligence labs such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind Severing ties with data classification startup Scale AI After investing meta 14 billion dollars In the data vendor and appoint its CEO.

The company apparently told investors that it was on track to reach $500 million in ARR faster than Anysphere, the startup behind Cursor, which achieved the famous milestone roughly a year after launching its core product.

“Since we founded Mercur nearly three years ago, AI has advanced at an astonishing pace. But it still struggles with the nitty-gritty that drives economically valuable work — like balancing trade-offs, understanding intent, developing taste, and determining what needs to be done, not just what can be done,” the company wrote in a blog post emailed to TechCrunch.

The startup says it currently pays more than $1.5 million a day to its contractors. It has over 30,000 experts on its roster, who pay over $85 per hour on average.

Mercur said it will focus on three areas: expanding its talent network, improving its systems for matching its contractors with clients, and building new products to automate more of its operations.